Christmas 2004

41. Albion St.,
Stratton,
Cirencester,
Gloucs.
GL7 2HT
U.K.
December 2004.

Hello, Good Evening and Welcome! (shiver!!)

Another year passes and the old brain cell creaks, becomes ever more frayed, and crumbles into dust with its little legs in the air - sigh! Think ‘Goat Lab’1 - some of you may know what I mean!! Perhaps sinister forces are tapping into my brain …..gulp! “….nooooo!!! ….not the …..!” (strangulated gurgle!) …. “baaa! baaaaaa! BAAAAAA!!!”. There are a lot of THEM out there! There are more of THEM than us! Why are THEY staring at me? I’m all alone, it’s after midnight, Bob is away at CAT (the place, not the furry thing!), and the bat-sheep are massing out there! ……..AAARRRGGGHHH!!! Right, that’s got a few obligatory exclamation marks out of the way ….. for now!…… huh! huh! hurrrh! (evil cackle!) (Oops! they’re everywhere!).

This year the house is in total disarray. Nothing new in that, says she, staring over the top of the laptop at the mountain of paper which, even as I type, is flowing gently(?) from table to chair to floor. “Don’t put it there!!” ……slither! …..rumble! ……crash!! ……Oooops! …..too late! But …! “Hoorah! A space! It’s mine!” ….. “No, it’s mine!” (nudge! biff! gouge!). “I can eat! ….cackle! cackle! sob!” (manic laughter!). Ho! hum! A slight diversion. SCREEEECH! MIIIIINNNGG! THWACK! THUD! “HI! Hooooo! We’ll dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, the whole day through!” Oh joy! wakening to the merry sound of happy builders, carpenters and electricians blocking up our old side door and putting in a new front door and MATCHING windows! You may scoff, but the previous occupant of this house put in odd non-matching windows (??!) …yes, we wondered what he was on, as well!! “Damn!” thinks Rupe, “I can’t break in any longer!” (No longer a dodgy catch on window or Yale-lock on door). But now, only ten years after we moved in, we now have matching sliding sash windows on the first two floors and front and back doors with beautiful coloured and etched glass …..yes!!! At last!! Only the top floor to go! “Argh!” ….flop! thump! Oh, dear, Bob has just fainted! Curses! Moriarty! Now who’s fingers can we use to prevent draughts? Only joking! (It is an unfortunate fact that no little Dutch boys are currently available). One of Bob’s many jobs at the moment is hole-filling - a bit of a come-down from I.T. …what? (More on that later, folks.) Phase six million of the Irving residence project was conceived in January, communicated to Ed. Boote, the carpenter and project manager in March, and finally finished last week! ….well, their bit, anyway! We, however, are only just beginning!!! Gulp! “Six months of hard labour …..!”(sob!) “… I can’t take any more!” …..NEE! NAA! NEE! NAA! (It is a well-known fact that mad-houses aren’t available any more). “I guess it’s ‘Care in the Community’ for you, my lad!”. “I think this paragraph is getting out of hand and should be stopped!” (officious voice somewhere in the aether ……………!). And now for something slightly more sensible - only slightly, mind! Actually, I did want to say something about walling-up (or should this be ceilinging-up??) sheep in the ceiling ……(!) “BAAA! BAAA! BAAAAA!!” “Oh, do shut up, it’s for your, actually our, own, good!” (just the wool - not the sheep - we LOVE sheep!). This is the ‘green’ alternative insulation. No sheep were harmed in the insulating of this hallway. I did have the idea of putting in a tape-loop, so that when the door is opened ….. “BAAA!” …..(scary, or what) ……..more on this next year ……. “Bring back Bedlam!” (plea from Bob).

The towel threw in Bob, job-wise, this year, around about June, and gave the joy of his beloved(!) (yeuch! spit!) job to an Indian software company, much to his relief (and redundancy money - Gold! Gold! GOLD! ….(cackle!) ….are you sure he’s the right person for the job, Moriarty?). “Get out of my paragraph, woman!”. Ahem! And so I have opted for the great (late) middle-aged career change to go back to a bit more eddification with an MSc degree loftily called : Architecture: Advanced Energy and Environmental Studies. This mostly involves one-week visits to Machynlleth (Wales (oooh! lovely sheep! - Joy) - as if you hadn’t guessed) to get slightly boozed, occasionally rather cold and lots of lectures about how to build houses or offices that don’t use any energy or make you ill. Because of the presence of CAT, Machynlleth is now the new Stroud / Hebden Bridge, i.e., a slightly hippy, definitely green, alternative place, with middle-class pretensions and house prices to match. At least veggie food is mainstream! (Veggies rule! - cackle! cackle! (power-crazed manic laughter) - Joy).

Despite being poor, we did manage a freezing cold holiday in North Wales, up a mountain near Betws-y-Coed. When the Landmark Trust people said it was for hardy souls, we hadn’t appreciated that this included June. The previous week in Oxford, I was sweating buckets lugging rocks around Earth Sciences’ annex (air-conditioning? - don’t be silly!), only to be plunged into near-freezing conditions half-way up a Welsh mountain-side the following week. To rectify this situation, we resolved to purchase a bag of coal, the only heating in the place being a towel-rail in the bath-room - warmth! ooooooh! warmth! mmmmm! (this made it even harder to dislodge Joy from her ablutions every morning - sigh! - Bob.). We arrived in early evening sunshine, managing to read the map sufficiently accurately to hit the forestry track on only the second attempt (at this point a feeling of déjà vu sweeps over seasoned readers of Irving newsletters), pointed the car upwards to grind our way in second (or maybe third) gear through the glowering forest, past the howling wolves, ignoring the pallid local in evening dress with pointed teeth, to arrive finally at the haven that is known as ‘The Parking Place’. This, dear readers, was where the true horrors began - for the old chapel was a quarter of a mile away and inaccessible unless on foot! It was a race against time to offload enough food for a week, duvets, pillows, clothes, music centre, CD’s, kitchen sink, etc., load up the back-packs, and hike through sheep and deer poo, deep puddles, over the stile on to the wobbly stone bridge over the trickling, gurgling, or rushing brook (or raging torrent!), across the squelching, squidgey, boggy field, ducking under the overhanging branches, and up the final steep rocky path to the chapel, lying in deep gloom among the forbidding trees and permanently wet ground next to another perilously close gurgling brook. Three trips each later, bodies sweating and hearts thudding, we finally slammed the door on the all-encompassing gloom, the piercing howls and the pallid local, and surveyed our abode ......and shivered! “Damn! The central heating is off for the summer .......no coal! .... the b*st**ds have only left us a few miserable twigs .....!” (much wailing and gnashing of teeth!) .... “Aargh! I’ll freeze to death! ... no! ..... the chilblains will get me! ....sob!”.

Next morning, we awoke to thin weedy sunshine filtering through the curtains, our breath freezing on the cold air, and with a “Land of my Fathers” chorus of fierce singing sheep just below the window ........baaa baa baa-a baa ..... welcoming us to their hillside ........ “Please! Turn those sheep down!! I need to sleep!” (yawn!). We resolved that (survival being uppermost in one’s mind) .....coal must be bought! Arriving in Betws-y-Coed (a rather attractive little town with a quaint railway station .... “railway station! .......eee by gum! ...haven’t seen one of those in years!”), it seemed that the garage was a likely place to obtain coal. We were directed to this run-down petrol station with tumble-weeds and trees growing on the forecourt, looking as if it had been closed since the oil crisis of ’73, having been assured by the locals that this was where we could buy coal, and approached it carefully .......I’ve seen the films ...... The bloke who ran it seemed to make his whole living from selling what was outside in cages, such as wood, gas cylinders, coal - there certainly wasn’t any petrol (shape of things to come - Bob! - or was this reverse Shangri-La?) ...odd! Never did find out why ...... (garage with no petrol, cf. pub with no beer?!!). He came out and casually tossed 25 kg of coal - it was the only size - into our car. Back at ‘The Parking Place’ - heave! heave! - couldn’t shift the bugger! - realized the enormity of the task ahead ..... Could we load it on to a convenient(?) passing sheep? No pack sheep to be seen and anyway they haven’t yet evolved to work kissing gates (did we mention the kissing gate?) on the ‘path’ up to the Chapel. Bob was nominated as pack animal (now there’s a surprise...!). Having struggled to load it into the back-pack - don’t even ask - Bob, too, found with difficulty that he hadn’t yet evolved to pass through kissing gates! Mind you, this prevented him from falling on to his back - could have been nasty, I’d have had to put him out of his misery! You have to be cruel to be kind! ......Cackle! Cackle! I got the easy bit - we found out later that the local Spar shop sold 10 kg bags, though we needed more of them - 10 kg barely lasted a night!

The weather seemed to follow a definite pattern for the first couple of days, in that most of the day it rained, or looked as if it might, followed by a gloriously sunny late afternoon / evening. As soon as the brightness appeared in the sky, we were out there - it being far warmer outside than in! Our surroundings were interesting, in that the chapel in which we were living was once the heart of the little hamlet of Rhiwddolian, which was mostly abandoned in the early twentieth century when work at the various slate mines within walking distance dried up. ‘Walking distance’ is a key phrase here, as one had to walk everywhere, which made life incredibly hard if you had to keep walking up and down the mountain to get to school, shops or work (if you could find it), and so one by one the cottages were just left to the elements (and the sheep!), until the Landmark Trust took over the chapel and two of the houses which were among the last to be inhabited, and turned them into holiday homes. The rest are just picturesque ruins, apart from two farmhouses - hence the fierce mountain sheep! We have a theory about why the sheep are so noisy in Wales - it’s just so lonely on the hillsides, they just need to talk to each other and keep track of where their friends and family are, and they’re mostly wild! Cotswold sheep never say a word - probably cowed into submission by domestication!! We explored up and down Sarn Helen (the local Roman road), walking over the mountain to Pont-y-Pant, which has a railway station and a grand-looking Victorian hotel (now fallen on hard times - after all, they let us in for a drink!) perched high on a commanding bluff over the river. One former resident of the chapel had mentioned that she got off the train at Pont-y-Pant, and carried all her gear (food, clothes, etc.) over the mountain to Rhiwddolian, where in a couple of days she planned to meet up with her husband. The log-book was beginning to sound a bit like the siege of Mafikeng - “food beginning to run out” - “am completely out of bread” - “scanning the horizon for signs of relief party” - “do not know how much longer I can hold out”, etc. The relief party, or husband, finally arrived two days late! Perhaps she gnawed him to death!! I digress - Sarn Helen appears to be the name of almost any Roman road in Wales, on account of the fact that Helen was supposedly Welsh, and was the wife of Constantine, who was crowned emperor inYork. However, this was the real Sarn Helen! (bet they all say that!). Refreshed from quaffing our ale, we staggered back over the mountain, scattering sheep before us, knees-a-quiver, and descended into our valley, when - click! - the light went out! We were on the wrong side of the valley vis-à-vis the sun. Hearts thudding, our little chapel-in-the-mire never looked more inviting, as we squelched our way to the front door, watched by a thousand pairs of eyes - gulp! Twas the evil sheep! ....wolves? .....pallid local in evening dress??

The following two days were quite warm and pleasant, as long as we escaped from our cold, damp, little chapel in the Great Grimpen Mire. We travelled to CAT (see above) so that Bob could see what he was letting himself in for - actually it was somewhere we’d both been wanting to visit for some time. CAT was created in a disused slate-quarry by a group who wanted to put into practice all the greenest ways of constructing and heating buildings and living in the least polluting ways. All the Centre buildings are highly insulated - one can be warmed adequately by 2 or 3 people walking around in it - and are built from low-energy materials like straw bales, rammed earth and green oak. As much as possible of the electricity on the site is generated by renewables - wind, water and solar - and water is heated by solar energy and wood chips. There is a funicular railway to take you up from the carpark to the centre which is powered by water from the CAT dam and demonstration set-ups for every sort of low-energy system you can think of. The place is run by a band of happy people who also give courses on everything from solar heating to composting toilets. And the café does great veggie food!!

After the rather austere look of CAT, we went off the next day to revel in the over-the-top, recycled architecture of Portmeirion, designed and built by architect Clough Williams-Ellis. Somehow, I think it would be fun if they could combine the two together! Just because you’re trying to be green, it doesn’t mean you can’t have jolly-looking houses. Though I can’t see the CAT people (mieow) being enthusiastic about a fake concrete yacht! Portmeirion also has quite beautiful gardens (lots of follies!), so we resorted to them to get away from the tourists and the sheer naked capitalism!! And the food was nothing to write home about either! Some of the buildings are used as holiday cottages, and the most remote one, ‘White Horses’, is so-called because with a spring tide and a south-westerly gale, crested waves batter its walls and occasionally even get in! Yes! I just have to stay there! (Strangely, I don’t think spending the night with the spring tide is my thing! - Bob!).

Sleeping with an occasional ‘white horse’ might have been a tad preferable to the drenching that we received over the next two days. Wales certainly lived up to its reputation! The decision to visit the Great Orme mine was undertaken without recourse to the weather forecast - “Oh! sod it! We’ve missed it again for the six millionth time!”. The image of a cup of cocoa kept arising in my thoughts despite jostling for attention with interesting mine facts and “is that a millimetre-sized smear of malachite on the wall or just mould?” - anything to avoid going out into the teeth of a howling gale-force storm. Unfortunately, two-thirds of the mine tour is on the surface, so we all got stuck in the underground tunnel whilst huddling together for warmth! Placing one’s head above ground level meant risking almost certain death by being swept over Great Orme Head into the sea! Went to talk to on-site ‘specialist’ - provenance uncertain - “you haven’t seen the S4C programme?” - rolls eyes in disbelief - “you’re not local?” - “get out there and read the captions!” (gulp!). So out into the teeth of the gale we stumbled - wishing we had windscreen wipers on our specs - the brain dredging up images of ever-larger cups of cocoa, which were occasionally suppressed by the ingress of Very Interesting Facts about how pre-historic peoples undertook the business of mining the copper. There was much work in progress, and a children’s fact sheet had been prepared, but it would have been good to have had reading matter geared towards adults apart from the captions all around the site - if only so that we could have sat longer over the steaming cup of cocoa! The café was full of folk with white-knuckled fingers gripped tightly around their mugs - the only hot object for miles - since it’s not usually socially acceptable to use total strangers as hot-water bottles! Was this really June? Time warp ......? (shiver!)

The gale followed us back to the little chapel-in-the-mire - squelch! squidge! suck! ..... “help! me wellie’s sinking!” “aaarrgghh!!!” “Not the pallid local in evening dress!!! ....Noooooo!” “huh! huh! hurrrh!” (evil cackle!). Further squelching noises ....slamming of door ......clinking of tea cups ..... whooshing of air up chimney (attempts to get fire going) .....peace! Aaaaahhhh! (sigh!). It was a little while later, totally engrossed in an interesting book about the life of this woman hill-farmer on Snowdon, that I noticed a certain irritation of the eyes (too much reading, perhaps?) followed by the sight of Bob through a blue fug (odd, I thought, I wasn’t aware he’d taken up smoking). Memories of my childhood came flooding back! The gale was filling the room with smoke, or the pallid local in evening dress was blocking the chimney. “Cough! Cough! Splutter! Open a window! I’ll get bronchitis! Or asthma! Or die of secondary smoke inhalation!” “Mmmmm! smoked Joy!” “Shut up! You’re a vegetarian!” “Arrr, but you only eat veggie food!” Grrrr! Kill!

The next morning we awoke to a room filled with black smuts (cough), and shaking a thick layer from our clothes, we resolved to go on a 6 or 7 mile circular walk taking in Swallow Falls (which was actually just down the road!). We should have realized that missing the weather forecast again was not a good omen, but obviously our brains had been dulled by pollutants from coal smoke, and we boldly went where we had not boldly been for a long time - boldly! Our map reading skills were not too bad, but we made the mistake of following these two seasoned hikers (you can always tell - they’re the ones dressed in the latest gear - either that or they were German!). As we turned away from ruined mine buildings (slight drizzle), marched up the hill (pitter! patter!), we hit the cloud base and a rushing mighty wind roared from out of nowhere, and some Other-Worldly Being vent his ire upon his wretched subjects by chucking a few barrels of water in our direction! Now was the time to turn back - you can’t fight the forces of Nature or Other-Worldly Beings. We were a little wet! At this point, Bob’s resolution wavered, but eternal optimism prevailed (anything to avoid being grazed to death by rabid sheep, sucked in to the Great Grimpen Mire, or pierced by the pallid local in evening dress). Back on the road again, other Forces of Nature (the sun) spread across our sodden bodies, a rainbow spread across the sky, grins spread across our faces, and we merrily squelched our way around the countryside towards the Swallow Falls (the long way round!). Eventually, just when the old knees were a-knocking and the little legs a-creaking, we heard the sound of a raging torrent. As we hacked our way through the undergrowth, suddenly we were rewarded with a sight so magnificent, it could only be .....The Source of the Nile! (I fear, gentle reader, that too much exertion had had its effect upon the presence of mind of our two intrepid explorers .....either that or too much blood loss ....cackle! cackle! huh! huh! hurrrrrh!).

The little chapel-in-the-mire became a raging furnace that evening, as we resolved to burn all remaining coal and wood ........anything we could lay our hands on ....ah! haaaah! haaaaaaah!!! We slumped in our chairs, steaming gently, wet clothes everywhere, reading the log-book. This was an interesting experience, as someone in the past had made an index(!) of all the exciting bits! One particular incident springs to mind. One New Year’s Eve, long time ago, an expectant couple were staying in the chapel. The weather turned nasty and a storm blew up, bearing much snow, which rapidly drifted and blocked the valley. The woman then went into labour, and her husband rushed out into the snow to try to get to the doctor’s (this was in the days before mobile phones - not that you can get much of a signal up there!). Finding the track blocked, he decided to raise help from Ty Coch, the other inhabited holiday home, to see if anyone had any medical knowledge. Of the group of four friends who were staying there, one was a trainee veterinary nurse, so they were in luck(?!) All four of them came over to help and comfort the couple, whereupon the trainee produced something that would ‘calm her and induce a feeling of well-being’, and rustled up a cup of tea with ‘a mushroom floating in it’ for the husband! The log-book entry went into the realms of philosophy at this point - boy! it must have been good stuff!! Luckily, everything went well, and the mother and baby were fine, except that they hadn’t any clothes or nappies for the baby! They had to wrap him (in swaddling clothes and lay him in a manger?) in the designer shirt that the wife had just bought her husband for Christmas! The next day the snow had melted enough for the doctor to come, but he was rather superfluous by then. I bet he wondered how they had all stayed so calm! A romantic tale to finish our holiday with, don’t you think?

And talking about herbally-relaxed life-styles... our family is making its way in the world in their usual happy-go-lucky fashion. Tams has migrated to Bristol (or was migrated by me - Bob!), taking a year out between her 2nd and 3rd years at Dartington, allegedly to learn the use of some sophisticated music composition software, but we all know that it’s because she can now indulge her passion for cleaning houses and doing ironing! She is thinking of moving into a squat - “a semi-legal one, where you have to sign a contract ....” - hmmmm!! On the plus side, she is now close enough to cook meals for us, but not close enough to act as meals-on-wheels! Rupe has been exploring England even further afield this year, continuing to play loud music in four different bands (no, we didn’t miscount - last year it was but three - but they do keep-a-multiplying......!). This year he has been to Southend, Portsmouth and a Scout Hut near Swindon. Oh! and played a Christmas party in June (they have a different calendar in rural Oxfordshire - “give us back our eleven days!” - or in this case twenty-six weeks!). The most hectic event was a festival in rural Essex (yes, there does appear to be such a place), where they had booked three of his bands and scheduled them to play immediately one after the other on different stages, forcing a mad scramble with cymbals, stands, amps and guitars, across a baking hot field between each set. For reasons that escaped us (possible lack of communication between event organizers and stage mangement), one of the three bands only had time to play 3 songs - this after a 3-hour drive the previous night! But Rupe still thought that they had gone down reasonably well and it did get them the gig in Southend, so maybe it was worth it. It’s a hard and dedicated life being a musician - normal people actually need sleep! Just occasionally he still sings opera for light relief, if that’s what you call ‘Madame Butterfly’! Next year, he might be elevated out of the chorus.....!

The author of 95% of this letter, i.e., me, Joy, am now the only breadwinner (Rupe’s work only partly keeps Rupe!), so officially we’re poor! But thanks to the generosity of Bob’s ex-employer, we haven’t really noticed ......yet! Watch this space.

Well folks, do have a jolly Christmas and a sustainable New Year!

Lots of love from Joy, Bob, Rupert and Tamsin.

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